


Guardian

by ladyflowdi



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e14 Grace Under Pressure, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-01-11
Updated: 2006-01-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney deals with survivors guilt. Tag for Grace Under Pressure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this the night after Grace Under Pressure aired. One of my favorite stories.

Rodney's life wasn't always ruled by physics. 

Once, a long time ago, almost longer than he could remember, he'd been a little boy who loved little boy things. Granted, even then he was a weirdo science freak and several grades in front of his age group, but he'd been normal. Sort of. 'Normal' for him just meant building the entire Periodic Table out of Legos (and color coding them by family) and writing thesis papers on Improbability Drives during his rabid Douglas Adams phase.

He was alone a lot. Other seven year olds were busy playing GI Joe or bike riding to be much interest to him, and that fine winter day hadn't been much different. Cold nibbled his ears and bit at the tip of his nose, slipping down into his jacket, no matter how heavily he bundled up. 

He'd woken up to his mother and father screaming about Jeannie again (her lack of prospects post high school only made her hate Rodney more), and as much fun as _that_ was, Rodney could think of better things to do. Like rip out his toenails. 

He wriggled his foot in his boot and shuddered. 

"This ranks an eleven on the 'stupid things to do' scale, Reginald," he whispered.

Reginald didn't blink, simply looking up at him out of green button eyes, the stiching of his mouth quirked just a little bit as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. His little ribosomes freckles and mountain of wild, furry cell membrane hair, wet with snow, made him look very much the part of a slick, smooth spaceman.

Rodney rubbed his fingers brusquely together, shivering down to his cold toes. His mittens and scarf were exactly where he'd left them - on the floor of his bedroom, next to his homemade calculator, leapt over Rodney-Be-Nimble style on his way to get out of the house as fast as possible.

"It was frost bite, Reginald, or going back, and I'm sorry, but I'd rather go to school in my underwear than risk it."

Reginald didn't move from his snowy cockpit, and Rodney nodded firmly at him, picking up the last two sticks he needed. "Good man."

The model of Mariner 10, complete with flags and communication relays, hadn't sculpted quite right with snow and the added astronaut cockpit, but Rodney congratulated himself on his eye for detail, anyway. It was quite good, for being a snow creation, and for being designed from the scrap of newspaper he'd found from the launch day in his fathers clipping pile.

A shadow fell over his work and he peered up from under his hat.

Later, Rodney wondered if maybe he'd wet himself, just a little, when Marty Green looked down at him thoughtfully with all his pals behind him. It wasn't that they were _mean_ , per se, it was that they were _huge_ when compared with Rodney, who was very aware of how skinny and shrimpy he was in comparison, he of the wet noodles for arms.

Marty Green was like a Semi passing a Honda on the highway.

"Hey. You're that geek, that kid geek. You're in grade six, right?"

Rodney stood slowly, praying to any heavenly figure who might be watching that Marty and his friends hadn't seen Rodney talking to Reginald, because the last thing he needed was to get teased in school for talking to anything _stuffed_ , even if the stuffed individual in question was otherwise very much loved.

Then again, the people Rodney dealt with on a daily basis didn't have a brain between them, but that didn't necessarily make them _blind_ , and when one's masculinity was on the line, it was always good form to make sure.

Rodney's mouth tightened. "I'm not a geek."

The one in the back cracked his knuckles and Rodney squeaked. They were big enough to squash him and leave him to die of exposure in the snow, and Rodney _needed_ his extremities to be brilliant. If he had no fingers and no toes because they'd snapped off from frostbite, he'd be the fingerless, toeless wonder of the world, and yes, that was all fine and good, but Rodney _liked_ to eat and write and scratch his nose.

He took an involuntary step back.

Marty shrugged. "Whatever. Look, your sister paid me to beat you up."

"Oh."

Reginald, still seated aboard the Mariner, seemed to quirk his stitched mouth as if to say, 'Like that's a surprise.'

Rodney frowned, instead, because Marty sure didn't look like he wanted to beat Rodney up. He looked like he wanted to play hockey, if the sticks and skates and all were anything to say. _Buy some time, Rodney, before they maim you for life_. "Nice stick." 

Marty twitched the hockey stick laying against his shoulder. "M'dad's getting me a Kevlar for Hanukkah. Mid-round curve, low lie angle. 85 flex," he said, sniffing and thumbing his nose proudly just like in the movies. Rodney couldn't help but think that was pretty neat.

"Isn't Hanukkah three weeks away?"

"Yeah, so?"

"So, I heard you're going up against Victor Steeble next weekend. Right? The big goon in grade nine, the one with the neanderthal face?" 

"Yeah... so?"

Rodney huffed and rolled his eyes. "What are you, three? I'm a genius! Put two and two together!"

The four of them traded identical looks of confusion. Rodney congratulated himself heartily on proving his 'brainless idiot' theory, and mentally patted himself on the back.

He rubbed his face in a way he'd seen his father do countless times, rolled his eyes heavenward, and said. "Your hockey stick." 'You halfwit' went without saying. "I can make it aerodynamic. I'm a geek, right? Well, my geekyness comes in handy. Faster speed, harder hit, easier to use. It's simple physics."

Marty stared at him. The two guys behind him blinked in surprise. "What about the money your sister paid me?"

"Give it to me, for fixing your stick," Rodney said, crossing his arms. "Besides, she's going out with Steeble."

The four of them guffawed out loud, and Marty slung an arm around Rodney's small shoulders. "I like you, kid. What's your name?"

"Rodney."

"Rodney, eh? Hey, Rodney?"

Rodney looked up. "Yeah?"

"Rodney. Stay with me here, buddy."

He frowned tightly, because so far as he could tell he was staying right where he was supposed to, if Marty's chattering in his ear was anything to go by.

It was then that he noticed the cold. Canadian's generally had thicker skin than most, but this was ridiculous. He'd forgotten his mittens, not...

_...not plunged face first into freezing cold water._

The cold felt so sharp, so bitter, that Rodney swore it bit into the tips of his ears and nose. Cold wind seemed to seep in through his many layers of clothes, finding every sliver of skin it could and skating along it till Rodney was sure, positive in fact, that it had a mind of his own. 

The best kind of cold, the get-out-of-school cold, get-pneumonia cold, possibility-die-of-hypothermia cold, was forever tainted in Rodney's eyes. This was the cold that death crawled through, wearing Griffin's face and looking out of Marty's soft gray eyes.

The laces felt rough under his fingers as he tightened them one last time. Beside him, grinning that lopsided grin of his from under his messy fringe that only eighteen year olds could manage, Marty said, "We are so going to cream them today."

"We'd better. I'm screwed when I get home," Rodney said, tucking his pants over the boots of his skates.

Before him, spread out over nearly half a mile, Image Creek glistened. The only creek in Rodney's home town that froze over so spectacularly, it had become the hotspot of hockey elite, where the cool kids went to hang out, where the best games were played, and where you went if you wanted to look like you were part of the in crowd. Unless, of course, you already were, then you got to laugh at the posers.

Marty grinned, happily palming his old Kevlar hockey stick back and forth between his gloved hands. "We're going to whip um," he said, butting his chin to the opposite side of the creek where Chuck and his friend were glaring at them. Beyond them, off in the sidelines, a lot more girls than Rodney was used to seeing outside of school were watching, cheering Raul on and wearing clothes that were not conductive to _staying alive_ in this kind of weather.

Chicks were so weird.

"Oh, they're going to get their asses handed back to them," Rodney said smugly, and tucked his scarf closer around his throat. He pulled his hat down over his ears, picked up his stick, and started across the ice. He did a twist or two, his signature move across the ice, just to hear the girls squeal. And if he tilted his chin up smugly and waved cheerfully at them, well.

To his credit, Rodney, even a thirteen year old Rodney, had been pretty sure the ice was solid all the way through. It was January, it'd been cold forever, and this wasn't the first time he'd skated on Image Creek this winter. He had no way of knowing the four grizzlies that had crossed the lake that morning had weakened the ice, couldn't have predicted that all it would take was a hundred more pounds to break through.

He never heard the cracking sound, or the shouts of fear. All he felt was the water, so cold it took his breath away, so cold it sucked the life right out of him. So cold, in fact, that he never had a chance to save himself. His heart stopped before he ever made it to the bottom of the lake.

"Rodney? 

He opened his eyes. 

Rodney didn't like the dark, even this kind, where the internal lights were all dimmed. The cold seemed to penetrate the walls, fogging his air in front of him in sharp, panting little clouds of white. Looking down at him in worry, his soft eyes pinched with worry, Marty said, "Hang in there, buddy," but his voice was different. Deeper, and the face was all wrong, and if Marty had ever worn his hair like that Rodney would have teased him until he was blue in the face. Only certain stuffed individuals of a checkered yarn past could pull it off with any success. How could Marty be here, anyway, when he'd died out there on Image Creek saving Rodney's life? 

"Rodney," Marty said again, tucking something that crinkled loudly closer to Rodney's ear. "Feeling any warmer?"

Rodney wanted to laugh, and something dusty and tinny came out instead. It sounded remarkably like a sob. "You're dead."

"Not the last time I looked. Granted, this being the Pegasus Galaxy, I'm sure that'll change at least three times," Marty said, smiling weakly down at him.

He said something over Rodney's head, and suddenly, before Rodney had a chance to prepare himself, a face framed by the wildest hair he'd ever seen peered down at him. He looked like Einstein, only with darker hair. "We strip you now. I promise I will say nothing if your testicles have crawled into your gut. If women ask me, and they will, I will say, 'very impressive'," the wild hair assured him.

Rodney closed his eyes. "Your mother thinks so, too."

Marty laughed out loud, relief in his voice, and Wild Hair rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath in Czech. Rodney missed it sometimes, the lilt of words, that musical lift and fall that English didn't seem to manage. Even anger sounded better in Czech. Then again, anger always sounded better in a foreign language.

When Rodney was thirty two years old, he felt up his first Russian woman. She'd sounded just like Wild Hair, not the language of course, but that same accent, only breathier. Her wide, expressive face used to crease with pleasure and anger and frustration, the words that had tumbled from her sounded like raw sex.

They were right, about Russian women. Never shaved. Then again, Rodney figured, any woman who shaved in a place like Russia was either completely insane or immeasurably stupid. Hell, he'd even grown a beard for the occasion, which just so happened to rasp across perky nipples. The squeal from above used to make him laugh out loud, which just infuriated her and pleased Rodney all the more.

Ugliest woman he'd ever had sex with. It helped, though, that she had a heart of gold and a mind like a steel trap, and that they were in a Siberian bunker without power and risking hypothermia. No one around to see him go all soft and mushy, especially when she snuggled up for warmth, her ample bosom pressed up against his face. Oh _yes_ , Russian women. 

"Sex to stave off the cold, huh?" Marty said, doing something further down Rodney's body that included a lot of shifting around that Rodney didn't like too much. "Now there's a thought. Why don't we have such open minded women on Atlantis?"

"Situation not so bad, yet. Wait till the next storm, or till Wraith show up again, then there will be sex everywhere. Sex in corridors!" Wild Hair said, tugging sharply at Rodney's leg. "That is a nice thought."

Rodney choked on words that never managed to make it out of his mouth. He was so cold now that he was numb, so cold it hurt to shiver. It licked across what he supposed was his now very naked skin, before Marty wrapped him almost violently in a crinkly blanket that sounded too loud in his ears. " _Fuck_."

"Yeah, just..." Marty tapped the comm on his ear. "Reading you loud and clear, Doc." He paused, then disappeared from Rodney's field of vision.

A familiar Scottish voice rang through the comm link. "Rodney, can you hear me, lad?"

He remembered Scotland as long, rolling hills capped in white, steaming up in little wispy puffs here and there, and the big yellow sun shining dimly over it all. Snow covered trees stretched as far as the eye could see, the sea laying just beyond, gleaming almost white against the freezing winter sun. The village down the hill was warm and cozy, and inside, Rodney knew his grandma was making cocoa and homemade ice cream, waiting for him after his fun.

Rodney's grandfather, the biggest man he'd ever known, peered over his shoulder, one huge hand clasping Rodney's shoulder. He'd always smelled like scotch and gingerbread cookies, until the day he died out in the fields doing what he loved best - smoking cigars and watching his land grow around him, thumb caught in one suspender, his enormous body lifting and lowering with every bounce of his heels.

But now, now he was smiling, his beard crinkly against Rodney's cheek, and his free hand on Rodney's, showing him how to grip the controls of his sled. "Listen up good, now. On my mark...."

"Off you go down the hill, little one, fast as lightning," Rodney said to Wild Hair, watching his eyebrows raise and lower.

There was a pause over the comm. "How long has he been like this, Colonel?"

"About fifteen minutes. He keeps calling me "Marty"," Marty said, which was an odd thing to say, Rodney thought, frowning up at him. 

"And he was lucid when you brought him aboard, correct?"

"As much as Rodney ever is."

"You said he's badly concussed?"

"I'd say level two, possibly even a level three."

"Shine a light in his eyes and tell me what you see."

Rodney lay on the bed of the lake looking up at the ice capped water and thinking, thinking, _God, I'm going to die here in the wet and the dark._ There was no roar of water, so screaming, nothing but the still, eerie silence. It was as if Rodney had never broken through at all; the lake had simply swallowed him up and knit itself over, healing her wounds and sealing him inside.

Above, through the thick sheet of ice, angels walked over him as if silhouetted through the clouds.

And suddenly the light, light shining in his eyes and Marty looking right at him, wild eyed with fear. He hauled Rodney up through the ice when all Rodney deserved, all he deserved was to die because he was too much of a coward to save Griffin's life, to sacrifice himself to save another human being. 

His jacket was grabbed from above, he was pulled from the water, and Marty, Marty, _Marty please God_!

"Rodney," Marty said softly, like an apparition, a dream. The face was all wrong, the body, the eyes, but maybe this was what Marty would have looked like if he'd lived, if he'd had a chance to be something more than a stupid kid out on a stupid lake, saving a stupid boy's life.

"I'm sorry," Rodney said, his voice breaking so badly his voice gave out all together midway through. "I'm so sorry."

"Shhh," Marty said, squeezed his arm, and brushed the wet hair from his face.. "It's okay, Rodney. I know. Just rest."

Rodney closed his eyes, and drifted.

\- = - = -

The human mind's capability for emotion was vast, from seemingly effortless joy to emotions that were frankly exhausting. Rodney's problem was, he didn't know how to read his own emotions. He was never quite sure what he was feeling unless it was righteous anger, and anything else left him confused and a little nauseous. 

The celestial nebula that neighbored the Pegasus galaxy glowed fiercely in the dark sky, a smattering of planets and stars in the most beautiful pattern Rodney had ever seen in his life. It glowed off the kilometers of ocean, reflecting bright white, the palest of yellow, and he imagined he could even see the barest hints of orange and crimson from a far away nova. The stars kissed the ocean, brilliant and pale and somehow, not as alien as it once was not so long ago.

"Hey, Rodney," John said, the low drawl of his voice warm in the evening light. "Do you always play Mozart in your sleep?"

It was so inane, so absolutely ridiculous, that Rodney simply turned his head and stared at him.

"Mozart," John said again, wriggling his fingers in the air as he plunked into the bedside chair. "Rondo Alla Turca."

"How do you know Mozart?"

"My mom played piano. She taught classes in the afternoons, after school, when we lived in Texas. Used to drive me batshit," he added.

Rodney closed his eyes, turned his face back to the window. He could almost see the nebula, the imperfect pattern of the celestial sphere through his eyelids. Salty ocean air brushed the hair from his face. 

Long, thin fingers smoothed the blankets by his hand carefully. "So, you didn't answer my question."

Rodney looked at him again. "Mozart was a jackass."

"Please tell me you aren't forming your opinion off of Amadeus, Rodney."

"Of course not, what kind of plebe do you think I am?" He sniffed. "Besides, I love that movie. Tom Hulce was my hero in high school."

"So surprised," John said, and gave him that soft and easy smile of his that always made the tension in Rodney's chest ease. "Wanna watch it?"

"You brought Amadeus to the Pegasus Galaxy, Colonel? I thought your guitar was your--"

"It is," John said, smiling at him. "But I happen to know that the anthro ladies sewed an entire movie library into their unmentionables. Don't ask me what life sciences is doing with Amadeus, though. What with all the historical inaccuracies you'd think they'd have popped a blood vessel," John said, sprawling back in his chair. "They've also got a bunch of Jane Austen chick flicks, and Pirates of the Carribean. I'm sensing a Harelquin fetish, especially with the 'sewn into their underwear' bit, but hey, to each their own."

"Do I even want to know how you found out about it?"

"It's best for both of us if you don't ask," he answered, grinning and tapping his fingers along the ankle crossed over his knee into the awkward silence that followed.

"You could just ask, you know."

"There is such a thing as 'tact', Rodney."

Rodney snorted, then winced when that twinged something along the side of his head. John's eyebrows pulled together in sympathy. "Don't talk to me about tact, Colonel. Beckett drilled holes in my head. My _head_. My impressive, IQ of a genius _head_ , in the middle of a jumper, where I'd been stripped butt naked! My dick and my brains, out there jiggling for everyone to see. Where was the tact in _that_ , I ask you?"

"It was that or have your brains explode out of your ears, Rodney, and I'm sorry, but I wasn't scrubbing gray matter out of the grilling."

"Aren't you sweet."

"I try," John said. He peered at the white bandaging along the side of Rodney's head. "Do they hurt?"

Rodney glared at him.

"Oh, what? It was just a question!"

"A very tactless question."

"Well, it's not everyday I get to see Beckett go all 'mad scientist', either. He looked just a little too confident, there, with that power drill in his hand. To be honest, I had to leave when he started putting the holes in."

"They're called 'burr holes', Colonel, and for your information, I was unconscious for it."

"I know, I was there when you fainted," John answered, chin in hand. He smiled, smugly.

"Funny. Hah hah."

"I thought so." John peered over the blankets thoughtfully. "So, who's Marty?"

Rodney sighed. "If I was anyone other than myself, that 180 would have given me whiplash."

"You did mention something about tact."

Rodney glared at him. "He was my closest friend growing up. My sister tried to get him to beat me up, I offered to juice up his hockey stick instead."

John smiled that smile, the 'you pesky Canadians' smile he had for whenever Rodney mentioned his unyielding, undying love for all things hockey. "Beat you up, huh."

"I was a geek, back then."

John smirked at him with one eyebrow raised, a sort of gentle expression that wore on Rodney's nerves. "Stop that. You look like a demented lemur."

"Have you ever _seen_ a demented lemur, Rodney?"

"No, but I bet it would look exactly like you. And stop trying to psychoanalyze me, Heightmeyer will be doing enough of that next week."

John leaned forward against the bed. "What happened to the kid?"

Rodney did a 180 himself, from normal and uppity to more depressed than he'd been in a long, long time. His stomach turned, and he couldn't help but close his eyes against it. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you're my friend, and you've done it for me," John shot right back. "My turning into a big bug ring a bell?"

"You did break down pretty spectacularly."

"Thanks, Rodney." John leaned in a little closer. "Who was he?"

It was obvious, to Rodney and John both, that John wasn't leaving without getting an answer. In that moment, Rodney was too tired to fight it anymore, and he closed his eyes. "I hate you."

"I know."

"Marty was six years older than me, and he was my friend because he never held it against me that I was smarter than him. We were on the hockey team together - he convinced the coach to let me on, because you had to be fifteen to join first year. It didn't help my case that I was thirteen and in my last year, but I had what other people didn't."

"Smarts?"

"Talent," Rodney said, a little smile curving his face. "I grew up on skates. Short, skinny, fast."

"It's hard to imagine it," John said, but he was smiling. 

Rodney opened his eyes to glare. "So says you. How you ever played football weighing a hundred and fifty pounds, I'll never know."

"I was one eighty three, thank you."

"In your dreams." His fingers twitched at the blankets. "After practice, we'd go out on Image Creek, all of us, and play like our lives depended on it. If you didn't go home bloody, you hadn't really played. My parents hated it."

"Half the appeal?"

"Three fourths. It just so happened that they were right. My luck ran out, and I fell through some thin ice. The Mounties said later that they suspected a couple of bears had passed through towards the hills for late hibernation, and they may have weakened the ice. Whatever the case, I fell through."

"And he saved you."

Rodney closed his eyes. "I was on the bottom of the lake for ten minutes before he came down. The Mounties were at a station nearby, but someone had to go get them. I mean, I was long dead by that point, but I swore I could see them up there, through the ice." He shuddered and turned his face away, pulling the blankets up closer. "Why are you making me talk about this?"

"I already told you why," John answered. "What happened?"

"Marty got me halfway to the top before he let go. His hands stopped working.... the cold, you know? The Mounties got me out, dived right in to get me, but Marty... they looked, and looked, they told me, even when there was no chance he could be resuscitated, they kept looking. Hours." Rodney croaked. "Fuck, I hate you."

"I know," John said quietly, and didn't say anything else for a long time. He followed Rodney's eyes out to the night sky, more brilliant and beautiful than anything from Earth. More real. More alive. The very stars themselves seemed to move.

"You know, Rodney, Griffin did the right thing," John said softly.

"Spare me." 

John leaned in, bracing his elbows on the bed. "Our job here is to protect and serve. Griffin did what any one of us would have done. What I would have done."

Rodney's throat felt too tight. It hurt to swallow. "Shut _up_."

"I'm not shutting up, because we both know its true."

"He was so _annoying_ ," Rodney exploded, his eyes suspiciously burning. "He kept going on about my science being debunked, and asking if I was _Spanish_ , and he... he had a picture of his kids taped to the Jumper controls, and, and, and he would not _stop_ and let me _work_. Tomatoes, John! Fucking... tomatoes. God, how any man like that could honestly be allowed to travel through space is a mystery, because... he had kids, three of them. Teenagers, you know? It shouldn't have _been_ this way. My life isn't worth more than anyone else's."

John took Rodney's knotted fingers in both his hands and pressed his mouth to them, and it was all Rodney could do not to cry like he hadn't since he was a kid. "I hate you," Rodney choked, staring at the ceiling.

"I know," John said, kissed the palm of Rodney's hand, and ducked his head a little to catch Rodney's wet eyes. "You also hate my head full of dark, wavy locks and my tendency to flirt with alien women."

" _Really_ hate that," Rodney agreed, voice thick. "And your tendency to quote Spaceballs."

John got that amused look on his face that Rodney always enjoyed seeing so much, that twitch of his mouth that made the sadness in his eyes soften. "'I'm a mawg: half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!'"

It seemed wrong to laugh, but Rodney thought that maybe others had given their lives so Rodney could do just that. He was a touch hysterical, but that was okay, because John wrapped his arms tight around him and pressed his warm mouth to the back of Rodney's ear, and held on, held on, held on, as tight as he could.


	2. The Other Side of the Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A midnight Jumper ride on New Year’s Eve. Set directly after Grace Under Pressure.

Rodney had forgotten how quiet the labs could get.

Atlantis was bustle and explosion, all loud voices and twelve different languages and accents trying to one-up the other. It was about brilliance, about sticking the Earth’s biggest brains in the same room and not counting on the fact that big brains came with bigger egos, and putting them all together was like expecting spitting cats to play nice.

It almost made him nostalgic for Area 51, desert heat, the most brilliant sunrises he’s ever seen in his life, and a six billion dollar lab. Almost.

When all the insults had been slung with marginally less grace than monkeys at the zoo, the labs were unsettlingly quiet. Every hollow tick of cooling machinery, every soft whir of the computer terminals, hell, even the bubbles whirling through the posts in the walls, made the hair on the back of Rodney’s neck prickle, the gooseflesh rise on his arms.

Or, it could have been the Colonel standing at the door. 

Rodney turned in his chair, the wheels loud in the silence of the room. “Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare over people’s shoulders?”

Sheppard’s lips twitched. “Pot. Kettle.”

“I never said I didn’t do it.” Rodney sniffed. “Someone has to keep the minions from blowing up the city.”

“Ah, the struggles of being you,” Sheppard said, and he was downright laughing even if his face was perfectly serious. He looked young, startlingly _young_ though Rodney knew the man was pushing forty and had twenty years of military service under his belt. Rodney was a year younger than him but he looked his age. John could have passed for a thirty-something easily the way he swam in his clothes, the way he wore that shock of hair. It would have been mildly off-putting if it weren’t so _John_. “I haven’t seen you for a few days.”

“Yes, well, absence makes the heart grow fonder.” Rodney set his scanner down, proud of the fact that his hands didn’t shake once. “I’ve been busy.”

“So Zelenka said.” John motioned to his forehead. “How’s the noggin?”

Rodney didn’t reach up, though the stitches itched like a bitch just by thinking about them. “Still on my shoulders, I can only assume.”

“Mmm. Pretty lucky you hit your head where you did, Rodney. Didn’t even have to shave any hair when Beckett went all Freddie Kruger on you.”

Rodney glared at John’s laughing eyes. “Funny.” He crossed his arms. “Is there any particular reason you’re here at this hour, other than to mock my regal hairline?” 

“Now that you mention it,” John said, jerking a thumb behind him. “I came to break you out, Clyde.”

“I haven’t been dragging my tin cup across the bars.”

“Sure you have, you just didn’t know it.” John looked so _earnest_ , his lips curved just a little, his ridiculous hair standing straight up as if it, too, wanted to portray just the right amount of sincerity. 

“I already told you what I think of these stupid parties you all insist on holding -- it’s been a new year for fourteen hours already, did I _dream_ about the memo on time differentiation?”

John rolled his eyes so hard Rodney was surprised they didn’t get permanently stuck that way. “All four versions, Rodney. Come on. Don’t think of this as a New Year’s celebration… maybe just a Thank God We’re Alive celebration.” He smirked. “I even nicked snacks.”

Oh. “Snacks?”

“No nail file in a chocolate cake, but I’ll bet even MacGyver could have done something with Oreos and a couple of bottles of Dr. Pepper.”

Rodney twitched. “Oreos?”

“And Dr. Pepper. _Cherry vanilla_ Dr. Pepper.”

“ _What_ vanilla?”

“Some new thing,” John grinned. “You in?” 

Oreos or algorithms. Yeah, that was a choice.

Rodney stood, manfully did _not_ sway when the blood rushed to his head, and closed his laptop down. He shut off the machinery, powered down the ancient device he’d been studying, and locked it in his desk before he muscled into his jacket. “What time is it?”

“Almost midnight,” John said, and waited as patiently as a John Sheppard could, while Rodney closed the labs behind him. “Beckett’s going to have your ass when he finds out you were in there alone.”

“I don’t have a concussion anymore, Colonel,” Rodney said, defensively. He pointedly ignored the see-through piping in the hall, bright blue and pink bubbles swirling that were alarmingly dizzying. At least the hallways were empty -- everyone was at that stupid party, getting drunk or whatever it was that people did on New Years.

John was watching him from the corner of his eye.

Rodney straightened, shoulders stiff. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Somewhere. Don’t tell me you never snuck out as a kid.” John led them both into the transporter at the end of the hall, hitting the panel before Rodney could see. 

“As difficult as this may be for you to understand--” Rodney began, until he realized John was openly grinning. “Oh, funny. Yes, hilarious. Mock the injured man.”

“Concussed man,” John reminded, eyebrow arched. His fingers brushed the back of Rodney‘s shoulder. “You looked like the karate kid all week.”

Before Rodney could come back with a quip befitting that idiotic comment the unthinkable happened -- music began piping through the comm system, horrible power ballad music Rodney hadn’t heard since the eighties. Suddenly he was back in the gymnasium in Toronto -- _What a feeling, bein's believin', I can't have it all, now I'm dancin' for my life_ \-- a skinny misfit with brilliance sitting on his over-coifed shoulders. He’d had curls then, a big blond head of them, tumbling every which way that he’d greased and slicked. He‘d worn some hideous getup so in fashion then, skinny tie and all. He‘d thought he was so badass, wearing jeans and sneakers to the prom. There hadn’t been Stargate’s to worry about then, or space vampires for that matter -- just René Houghton, the love of Rodney’s sixteen year old life.

At least John was wincing just as hard, expressive brows scrunched with what could have been horror or a mild case of indigestion. Possibly both. “Right. Lorne was in charge of the music.” 

“I think it’s safe to say that Lorne shouldn’t be in charge of anything but his tampons from now on.”

John flashed him a grin, bright and blinding and gone just as fast before sliding back into his perpetual smirk. “He was smelling suspiciously floral the other day, you know. I just thought he’d finally gotten together with that cute botanist, but maybe I got it all wrong, there.”

“Four words, Colonel. Bath and Body Works.”

John laughed that god awful snorting choke of his that was half Kermit and half dying sheep, which just set _Rodney_ off, so it wasn’t any surprise that they made it all the way to the Jumper bay without Rodney really realizing where it was John was taking him.

When he realized where he was, when he looked in and saw all the Jumpers in their drive bays, quiet and asleep… well, he was proud of the fact that he didn’t stumble, not once. He just sort of folded in on himself. For a second he was sure that the blood was going to rush right out of his head and he was going to be two hundred and fifty pounds of concussed Canadian smeared on the floor. If John hadn’t been there, hadn’t had his hand on Rodney’s shoulder to keep him steady, Rodney was sure it would have happened. 

He didn’t bring out the barrage of insults roaring in his brain. This was so very beyond this. All he managed was, “ _No_.”

“Look, Rodney,” John said, and whipped out the Leader Mask, which was firm and understanding at the same time. Rodney _hated_ that face. Sometimes he felt like bitch slapping the sweet-talk right off of it. “It’s been a week. You can’t avoid this forever.”

“Watch me.”

John sighed. “Then I can’t let you back on mission rotation.”

Oh, God. “What?”

“You know exactly ‘what’.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Watch me,” John said, and eased the sting of Rodney’s own words being thrown back in his face by adding, “You know why, Rodney. I’ve sent good soldiers back through the gate for less.”

Warren had been a good kid. Tough kid. It hadn’t been his fault his team got slaughtered, or that he’d spent nine hours in a Jumper with their corpses waiting for rescue. He just hadn’t been the same after that, couldn’t get near the Jumper without freaking out completely. 

Even so, it was just _low_ bringing that up. “Fuck you. I’m not him, Sheppard.”

“I never said you were,” John said easily. His hound dog eyes creased just a little at the corners. “Nothing’s going to happen, I swear.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve got some experience in this sort of thing,” John said, but when Rodney shot him a sharp look John’s eyes were turned away, towards the lowering hatch of Jumper 5. “I’m going to talk you through this. You’re safe with me.”

“Griffin said the same thing, but we all know how great that turned out,” Rodney said, and something welled in his belly, sharp and painful. He closed his eyes against it, against the hurt in John’s eyes, and nodded, jerky and tense. It seemed like a dishonor to his memory, as if by giving this up he gave up everything Griffin had stood for. He’d been too good a man for someone like Rodney to ruin that. 

Plus, the promised snacks were waiting for them, and Rodney sat down and stuffed an Oreo in his mouth. “I hate you.”

“You’re only just saying that,” John said, quiet and amused. He took an Oreo too, and sat down in the pilot’s chair. “No surprises, okay? I promise.”

John was as good as his word. He talked through the initial system checks and a brief check in with Chuck up in Flight -- not sneaking out at _all_. He talked through the preflight power up and through takeoff, and Rodney closed his eyes.

The only sounds were the circulating air, the soft hum of the Ancient machinery, John’s warm voice and Rodney’s breathing, explosively loud in his ears. His heart was racing so fast he was sure it was going to beat itself right out of his chest. Claustrophobia gripped him by the throat and his ears began to ring in time with his breathing. 

John kept right on talking until Rodney knew they were passing atmosphere and cruising up into geosynchronous orbit. It wasn’t something he was aware of outside of the merest hint of change in the pressure in the cabin of the Jumper, a leveling out as it were. He talked until the Jumper stopped moving, as if it were floating all alone.

Wide open fields. The beautiful park that had been behind his childhood home in Toronto, with the lake that was frozen over more times than it wasn’t. He’d made hundreds of snowmen in that park. His best friend had died in that park, saving Rodney’s pathetic life. 

“Open your eyes, Rodney.”

No. God, no. He had Canada in his mind’s eye, right now, but if he opened his eyes he would be back in the Jumper -- oh, God -- in space, hundreds of thousands of miles from ground and sea. Human beings weren’t meant to fly. They weren’t meant to be trapped in metal coffins, even if those coffins could fly or swim or whatever the hell else they’d been designed to do. People were meant to be with wilderness. _Rodney_ was meant to be in an office somewhere, wearing a t-shirt and sneakers and his lab coat, taking a nap to refresh his mind. He was supposed to be chubby and cultivating the facial hair of the unwashed genius, long and tangled and shot through with the merest hint of gray. 

Something brushed his cheek, so softly he could have been dreaming. He opened his eyes to John’s face, hound dog expression gentle with understanding and tight with anxiety at the same time, crinkled around the corners of his eyes and mouth. “You okay?”

“Oh -- just peachy. It’s like I stepped into the twilight zone, where my best friend thinks it’s great taking me back to the scene of my worst nightmare.”

"No, that would be under water. We're in _space_." John arched one expressive brow, smiling crookedly in a way Rodney couldn’t help but think he’d picked up from him. “You do. You feel better.”

Rodney didn’t look out of the windshield, though he could see the smattering of white stars and the beautiful nebula hugging this solar system from his peripherals. “I do not. I feel coerced.”

But it was already too late; John looked completely sure of himself, smug even, and there’d be no living with him, now. He leaned back in his chair and popped open one of the new Dr. Pepper’s, offering Rodney a sip, which he took, thank you very much. “Three minutes till the new year, Rodney. Any resolutions?”

“Don’t die.”

John rolled his eyes. “Aside from that.”

“Don’t die? Also, win a Nobel prize.”

“Such humble aspirations.”

Rodney sniffed. “Lose weight. Running after you Amazon’s is killing me.”

“I dunno, you look fine to me, and you run pretty fast when there are people shooting at us.”

“Yes, thank you.” Rodney rolled his eyes right on back, much to John‘s amusement. “How about you?”

“Get up the courage to kiss you.”

“Yes, I--” Oh. “Excuse me?”

“Kiss you. You know. Maybe get your clothes off.” John glanced at his watch. “It’ll be a new year in forty nine seconds. My resolution this year is to kiss you. Do you have any idea what you do to me on a daily basis? With the hands, flapping everywhere, and that motor mouth, and those tiny little nipples of yours that are better indicators to just how excited you are than anything you could say?”

Rodney’s mouth dropped, but he didn’t say anything. What _could_ he say? 

As it turned out, a lot.

“Oh my God. Seriously. Is this the twilight zone? Did we pass through some Ancient vortex that made you lose whatever was left of your simple little mind?

“No twilight zone, Rodney.” John brushed his fingers across Rodney's hand, his shoulder, up across his chin. “You want this?”

Did he want this? Yes? No? Maybe? “I’ve never kissed a guy,” Rodney blurted. “Okay, I’ve kissed one guy, but it was sloppy, we were both drunk, and we’d just won a grant, so I don’t know if that counts.”

John’s eyes creased again, softly. “Kind of.” He brushed the line of Rodney’s jaw, thumbed Rodney's lower lip. “It’s been a hell of a year, Rodney, a shitty, no good, crappy-ass year. I mean, I turned into a bug, you blew up a solar system.”

“You… you ate the last of the caramel popcorn.”

“And you took care of the peanut butter granola bars.” He traced the slope of Rodney’s cheek, the sweep of his brow. “What I mean to say is -- it’s been crappy, yes, but we’re still here. We’re still kicking. That means something, Rodney. I‘m not sure what, but it does. You almost died last week. It made me think that… maybe waiting is overrated, and holding back is just stupid.”

And then John kissed him.

It wasn’t like any kiss Rodney had ever had. He was used to women softening, yielding to his touch -- now it was he who yielded, he who melted slowly into the best kiss of his life.

John kissed like wood smoke, passion curling around the corners of Rodney’s mind and wafting through the crevices of his every thought. John kissed without apology, sure of himself while still helplessly nervous, but he didn’t have to be. It was slow, passionate. It was everything that had been missing in Rodney’s life. 

He opened his eyes to John’s, warm and green. “Trust me, Rodney?”

Despite everything, or maybe because of it. “Yes.” 

John smiled, pressed his forehead against Rodney's, and kissed him again, and again, and again.


End file.
